Wednesday, March 10, 2010

It Pays To Compare Prices

We have a 1999 GMC Sonoma that was in need of repair. The “Service Engine” light would come on whenever we added gasoline. We also could not fill the gas tank because gas would spill out the top of the tank. We went to our local GMC dealership to inquire about the cost of the repairs They gave us a quote of $140 plus a $40 diagnostic charge and would require the truck to be there all day.

Not wanting to pay the diagnostic charge due to the fact we told them what the problem was, we chose to shop around for a reasonable repair price. We went to an auto repair shop and they told us the cost would be $140 plus $45 for the O-Ring that seals the gas tank. They also said the repair would take two to three days.

We then went to an auto body shop to see if they would even give us a quote. They said they do not normally do this type of repair which required the removal of the gas tank. However they did say they could remove the truck bed and make the repair without removing the tank if we would purchase the O-Ring ourselves from an auto parts store. They didn’t know what the charge would come to but assured us it would be under $100.

We purchased the new O-Ring and new locking ring for $17.52 at a parts store and took the truck to the body shop the next morning. They told us we could hang around because they were going to start working on our truck right away. They removed the truck bed, replaced the O-Ring and reinstalled the truck bed and gave us the repair cost of $60. The time that it took to complete the job was one hour and fifteen minutes.

So much for higher priced repair shops and days to get you vehicle back. It pays to shop around and compare prices.

3 comments:

Looks like you 2 are good at keeping your costs down. I have two questions: 1) How are you doing in the 1999 without a slide? 2) How does your buget look?? we want to go fulltime, have to deside on type of MH will have under 4000.mo income. Can we do it??